Paul Cleave - The Laughterhouse

“Just a name. James somebody. I can’t remember exactly. But I filed the papers. It’ll be on record.”

“What did James look like?”

“What? Jesus, I don’t know. Scary looking, I guess.”

“Scary how?”

Suddenly he becomes animated again. He’s eager to help, eager to get out of the handcuffs. “Oh, shit, real scary. He looked like he’d been beaten up really badly, and lots too. I didn’t even want to get into the car with him for the test drive.”

“How’d he pay?”

“Cash. It was only five hundred bucks,” he says, talking quickly.

“Uncuff him,” I say, turning toward one of the officers. “Don’t suppose you still have any of the money?”

“Why?”

“So we can fingerprint it.”

“No. It’s all gone. Five hundred bucks doesn’t last long.”

He’s got that right.

An officer uncuffs him and he starts rubbing at his wrists. “What did this guy do anyway?” he asks. “Kill somebody?”

“Thanks for your time, Donald,” I say to him, and leave him leaning against his car. I can hear him complaining to anybody who’s listening, which doesn’t seem to be anybody, so he just talks louder. I find the officer I got a lift with and convince him to let me use his car, telling him he can get a lift back to the station with somebody else. He doesn’t seem that happy about it but doesn’t put up an argument.

I call Schroder. I tuck the phone between my shoulder and ear and drive carefully around the blockade that’s slowly being disassembled. Media vans are approaching for what for them is going to be a nonevent.

“There are hundreds of files here,” Schroder says, “any one of them could be relevant.”

“Shrugs said he sold the car to a man named James. Apparently James hasn’t filed his ownership papers,” I say. Both buyer and seller must complete ownership forms whenever a car is sold privately. “Shrugs filed his. That’ll give us a last name, assuming he used his real name, which is doubtful.”

“I’ll make the call.”

“No files with the name James?”

“I’ll check, but it’s probably not even the guy’s real name. The car has arrived back at the station. Apparently it’s been wiped clean. No prints anywhere on it.”

“Shit. There must be.”

“Well, there aren’t.”

“Wait, wait, hang on a second. Check under the hood.”

“What?”

I tell him about helping the driver jump-start his car. “There might be prints around the battery, or at least there should be something around the latch.”

“I’ll get it done. Where are you heading?”

“Back to the station,” I tell him, “but first I’m going to go and get our suspect’s real name.”

Over the last year I feel like I’ve spent more time at the cemetery than I have anywhere else. There’s always something here pulling me back, it happens so often they should reserve a parking space for me. The second of the four men I’ve killed died out here by accident. I buried him and nobody knows about it except him, me, and the God both him and me stopped believing in. The third guy I killed was out here too, only that wasn’t so much an accident. Both men were killers. My priest was haunted by one of those men in real life, then murdered by the other. My priest so far is the only man to have died out here that I didn’t kill, though the police for a while blamed me for it. The pope ought to give me a medal.

There are no cars in the parking lot. No signs of any life. The gardens have a little less color than yesterday, the trees holding onto a few less leaves; many of those that have fallen are lying on the stone stairs to the church, many of them bunched up in the doorway. A few of them follow me inside. Father Jacob is practicing a sermon. He acknowledges me with a nod, but keeps practicing anyway. I guess it’s like being a stand-up comic-it’s all in the delivery. I walk down to the front and it’s not until I reach him that he stops.

“Theo,” he says, and he steps down from behind the podium and offers his hand. It’s cold. He smells faintly of cigarette smoke. “What can I help you with? You here to lighten the load?”

“Load?”

“When was your last confession?” he asks, his eyes flicking to the confessional booths off to the side.

“I have nothing to confess,” I tell him, which is a complete lie, and one that I’m not going to confess about.

“Everybody has something to confess.”

“Even you, Father?”

He smiles. “Shall we sit down?” he asks, sweeping his hand toward the front pew.

“I’m sorry, but I’m in a hurry.”

“Too much of a hurry to sit down, huh? Well, then tell me, what can I do for you?”

“I’m looking for a man. I saw him here last night, and he may come other nights too. I think he can help with our investigation.”

“Lots of men come here,” he says, his smile disappearing, being replaced by a frown, “and anything they tell me is confidential, you as much as anybody must know that, Theo.”

“Don’t worry, I’m not heading down that path. I just want you to tell me if you know him.”

“Hmm, I don’t know. It sounds like we’re on the border of priest-parishioner confidentiality.”

“Like I said, I’m not asking if he confessed anything. But it’s important. Three small girls were abducted last night and we believe he’s the man who took them.”

“Oh, oh, that is bad,” he says, which is as good a summation as any. “What’s his name?”

“I’m not sure. James, maybe.”

“Is that it?”

“He was here late last night.”

“I was asleep late last night,” Father Jacob tells me.

“He’s about six foot, weights around a hundred ninety points, around fifty years old. .”

“It’s not helping,” Jacob says.

“He has scars on his face. Old scars, like he’s been beaten up severely.”

Father Jacob exhales loudly, then pinches the bridge of his nose with his fingers. He brings his elbow to his stomach while holding the pose and looks down. When he talks, he’s talking toward the palm of his hand. “I’m not technically breaking my word to him or God by telling you this,” he says, “but yes, there is a man who comes here some nights who fits that description.” He looks back up at me and removes his hand. “I had to help him find his wife what, five or six weeks ago,” he says. “She died fifteen years ago and he said he’d never been to see her grave. It was strange. Very. . strange.”

“Fifteen years ago?”

“Yes.”

“Not nineteen?”

He shrugs. “I guess it could have been. My memory isn’t as sharp as it used to be, but I think he said fifteen. There was a child too. His daughter. He didn’t mention her, but I saw the grave.”

“Jesus,” I say, then, “sorry-that just slipped out.”

Jacob nods. “The dates were a few days apart. The daughter died, then the wife. I remember that, but can’t remember the dates. Maybe they were a week apart.”

“Can you remember the names?”

His face scrunches up as he fights to remember. “I wish I could, but no. I’m very sorry.”

“But you helped him find his wife. You saw their graves. You can take me there?”

“Yes, that I can certainly do.”

I follow him out the rear entrance of the church and into the cemetery. Other than the dead, the grounds are deserted. The trees more than yesterday resemble the bodies in the ground, skeletons without life. We walk through a pathway that twists between some big oak trees before hitting the first row of graves. We head deeper into them. I’m starting to build up a sweat. The last of the summer insects start biting at my arms, trying to store enough blood in their tiny bodies to get through the days ahead. The clouds are getting thinner, suggesting there may be some more sunlight today after all.